Archive

Quotes

The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all.

—G.K. Chesterton, 1908

Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made.

—Immanuel Kant, 1784

You should never have your best trousers on when you go out to fight for freedom and truth.

—Henrik Ibsen, 1882

The U.S. presidency is a Tudor monarchy plus telephones.

—Anthony Burgess, 1972

What experience and history teach is this—that nations and governments have never learned anything from history or acted upon any lessons they might have drawn from it.

—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, 1830

An appeal to the reason of the people has never been known to fail in the long run.

—James Russell Lowell, c. 1865

Let him who desires peace prepare for war.

—Vegetius, c. 385

Treaties, you see, are like girls and roses: they last while they last.

—Charles de Gaulle, 1963

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.

—Thomas Jefferson, 1787

Every communist must grasp the truth: “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”

—Mao Zedong, 1938

Natural rights is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense—nonsense upon stilts.

—Jeremy Bentham, c. 1832

The vice presidency isn’t worth a pitcher of warm piss.

—John Nance Garner, c. 1967

Written laws are like spiderwebs: they will catch, it is true, the weak and poor but would be torn in pieces by the rich and powerful.

—Anacharsis, c. 550 BC